The death of the young has been a thematic concern in literature since Antiquity. That untimely demise not only exposes human vulnerability but makes for melancholic contemplation over the waste of beauty, confidence, and youth’s energy. And when that person is an artist, still young and learning, the implications seem more tragic. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (1821) is at one level a contemplation of the sudden death in 1821 of fellow poet John Keats. Keats died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis, a particularly virulent bacterial infection that attacks the lungs, at the time one of world’s most feared infectious diseases.

The poem, however, is also a sweeping anatomy of the implications of the untimely death of a creative artist whose achievements to that point promised only significant and important work, art that now would never be realized. In drawing on the tragic figure of Adonis from Greek mythology, a splendid, handsome young man killed pointlessly by savage boars while he was hunting, Shelley creates a towering elegy, nearly 500 lines, that shares his own private struggle to handle the loss of a compatriot, a dashing and promising talent done in too soon. Ironically, within months of completing “Adonais,” Shelley himself would be dead, drowned in the Bay of Lerici off the coast of Italy. He was 29.

Poet Biography

Born in 1792 in the bucolic countryside of his family’s estate near Broadbridge Heath, some 40 miles south of London, Percy Bysshe (pronounced bish) Shelley enjoyed a life of privilege. His grandfather amassed the family fortune of roughly $10 million in today’s currency; his father, a respected lawyer, served in Parliament. A voracious reader, young Shelley began drafting lyric poems by the age of 12. In 1810, he matriculated at the University College at Oxford only to be expelled within months for co-authoring an unapologetic defense of atheism. Undeterred, Shelley continued his education on his own. He published controversial broadsides that denounced conservative British politics and advocated radical agendas, most notably political independence for Ireland and the right of women to vote. He married a woman two years his junior who found the charismatic “bad boy” Shelley irresistible.

By 1813, when Shelley was 21, he had had two children by his wife and had taken a lover, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of a controversial liberal firebrand, William Godwin. Shelley journeyed to Europe with Mary and her sister, who eventually became his lover as well. By 1816, both his lover and his wife were pregnant. His distraught wife petitioned for divorce and later died by suicide, after which Shelley and Mary married.

With the 1816 publication of the grandly conceived epical Alastor about the power of the imagination, Shelley moved to the forefront of the generation of angry young Romantics who recast the role of the poet and broadened the message of poetry to enhance the spiritual life of its culture. On a lengthy trip through Europe, Shelley met fellow Romantics George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) and John Keats, and the three struck up something of a personal and professional relationship.

Over the next several years, Shelley completed sweeping philosophical works, among them Mont Blanc (1816), Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1817), The Revolt of Islam (1818), and his masterpiece Prometheus Unbound (1820). These dense and intimidating works explored the role of the poet, the composition of beauty itself, the place of humanity within nature, and the function of the soul. In addition, he published short lyrics that have become among the most frequently anthologized poems in the English language, among them “Ozymandias,” “To a Skylark,” and “Ode to the West Wind".

The Shelleys moved to Tuscany in northern Italy in 1818 to escape conservative British society, which had long hounded them over their radical views and unconventional lifestyle. The two enjoyed the freedoms of the Italian lifestyle and the sublime expanses of the Italian countryside. In 1822, a month shy of his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned when his sailboat, staffed by a largely inexperienced crew, capsized during a sudden squall while crossing the Ligurian Sea in northern Italy. His body, badly deteriorated and gnawed away by sea life, washed up 10 days later some 50 miles south near Viareggio. His cremains were interred at the Cimitero degli Inglesi (The British Cemetery) in Rome, near the final resting place of John Keats.

Poem Text

I

      I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

      Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears

      Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

      And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years

      To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,

      And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me

      Died Adonais; till the Future dares

      Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto eternity!”

II

      Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,

      When thy Son lay, pierc’d by the shaft which flies

      In darkness? where was lorn Urania

      When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,

      ‘Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise

      She sate, while one, with soft enamour’d breath,

      Rekindled all the fading melodies,

      With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,

He had adorn’d and hid the coming bulk of Death.

III

      Oh, weep for Adonais—he is dead!

      Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!

      Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed

      Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep

      Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;

      For he is gone, where all things wise and fair

      Descend—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep

      Will yet restore him to the vital air;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV

      Most musical of mourners, weep again!

      Lament anew, Urania! He died,

      Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,

      Blind, old and lonely, when his country’s pride,

      The priest, the slave and the liberticide,

      Trampled and mock’d with many a loathed rite

      Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,

      Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite

Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.

V

      Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

      Not all to that bright station dar’d to climb;

      And happier they their happiness who knew,

      Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time

      In which suns perish’d; others more sublime,

      Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,

      Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;

      And some yet live, treading the thorny road,

Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.

VI

      But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perish’d,

      The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,

      Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish’d,

      And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;

      Most musical of mourners, weep anew!

      Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,

      The bloom, whose petals nipp’d before they blew

      Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;

The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.

VII

      To that high Capital, where kingly Death

      Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,

      He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,

      A grave among the eternal.—Come away!

      Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day

      Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still

      He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;

      Awake him not! surely he takes his fill

Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

VIII

      He will awake no more, oh, never more!

      Within the twilight chamber spreads apace

      The shadow of white Death, and at the door

      Invisible Corruption waits to trace

      His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;

      The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe

      Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface

      So fair a prey, till darkness and the law

Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX

      Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick Dreams,

      The passion-winged Ministers of thought,

      Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams

      Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught

      The love which was its music, wander not—

      Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,

      But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot

      Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,

They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

X

      And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,

      And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,

      “Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;

      See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,

      Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies

      A tear some Dream has loosen’d from his brain.”

      Lost Angel of a ruin’d Paradise!

      She knew not ‘twas her own; as with no stain

She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

XI

      One from a lucid urn of starry dew

      Wash’d his light limbs as if embalming them;

      Another clipp’d her profuse locks, and threw

      The wreath upon him, like an anadem,

      Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;

      Another in her wilful grief would break

      Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem

      A greater loss with one which was more weak;

And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

XII

      Another Splendour on his mouth alit,

      That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath

      Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,

      And pass into the panting heart beneath

      With lightning and with music: the damp death

      Quench’d its caress upon his icy lips;

      And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath

      Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,

It flush’d through his pale limbs, and pass’d to its eclipse.

XIII

      And others came…Desires and Adorations,

      Winged Persuasions and veil’d Destinies,

      Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations

      Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;

      And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,

      And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam

      Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,

      Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem

Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

XIV

      All he had lov’d, and moulded into thought,

      From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,

      Lamented Adonais. Morning sought

      Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,

      Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,

      Dimm’d the aëreal eyes that kindle day;

      Afar the melancholy thunder moan’d,

      Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

XV

      Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,

      And feeds her grief with his remember’d lay,

      And will no more reply to winds or fountains,

      Or amorous birds perch’d on the young green spray,

      Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;

      Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear

      Than those for whose disdain she pin’d away

      Into a shadow of all sounds: a drear

Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear

XVI

      Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down

      Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,

      Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,

      For whom should she have wak’d the sullen year?

      To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear

      Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both

      Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere

      Amid the faint companions of their youth,

With dew all turn’d to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

XVII

      Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale

      Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;

      Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale

      Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain

      Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,

      Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,

      As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain

      Light on his head who pierc’d thy innocent breast,

And scar’d the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

XVIII

      Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

      But grief returns with the revolving year;

      The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;

      The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;

      Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;

      The amorous birds now pair in every brake,

      And build their mossy homes in field and brere;

      And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

Like unimprison’d flames, out of their trance awake.

XIX

      Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean

      A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst

      As it has ever done, with change and motion,

      From the great morning of the world when first

      God dawn’d on Chaos; in its stream immers’d,

      The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;

      All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;

      Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight,

The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

XX

      The leprous corpse, touch’d by this spirit tender,

      Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;

      Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour

      Is chang’d to fragrance, they illumine death

      And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;

      Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows

      Be as a sword consum’d before the sheath

      By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows

A moment, then is quench’d in a most cold repose.

XXI

      Alas! that all we lov’d of him should be,

      But for our grief, as if it had not been,

      And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!

      Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene

      The actors or spectators? Great and mean

      Meet mass’d in death, who lends what life must borrow.

      As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

      Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

XXII

       He will awake no more, oh, never more!

      “Wake thou,” cried Misery, “childless Mother, rise

      Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,

      A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.”

      And all the Dreams that watch’d Urania’s eyes,

      And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song

      Had held in holy silence, cried: “Arise!”

      Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,

From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

XXIII

      She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs

      Out of the East, and follows wild and drear

      The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,

      Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,

      Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear

      So struck, so rous’d, so rapt Urania;

      So sadden’d round her like an atmosphere

      Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way

Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

XXIV

      Out of her secret Paradise she sped,

      Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,

      And human hearts, which to her aery tread

      Yielding not, wounded the invisible

      Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:

      And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,

      Rent the soft Form they never could repel,

      Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,

Pav’d with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

XXV

      In the death-chamber for a moment Death,

      Sham’d by the presence of that living Might,

      Blush’d to annihilation, and the breath

      Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light

      Flash’d through those limbs, so late her dear delight.

      “Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,

      As silent lightning leaves the starless night!

      Leave me not!” cried Urania: her distress

Rous’d Death: Death rose and smil’d, and met her vain caress.

XXVI

      “Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;

      Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;

      And in my heartless breast and burning brain

      That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,

      With food of saddest memory kept alive,

      Now thou art dead, as if it were a part

      Of thee, my Adonais! I would give

      All that I am to be as thou now art!

But I am chain’d to Time, and cannot thence depart!

XXVII

      “O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,

      Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men

      Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart

      Dare the unpastur’d dragon in his den?

      Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then

      Wisdom the mirror’d shield, or scorn the spear?

      Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when

      Thy spirit should have fill’d its crescent sphere,

The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

XXVIII

      “The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

      The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;

      The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true

      Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

      And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled,

      When, like Apollo, from his golden bow

      The Pythian of the age one arrow sped

      And smil’d! The spoilers tempt no second blow,

They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

XXIX

      “The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

      He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

      Is gather’d into death without a dawn,

      And the immortal stars awake again;

      So is it in the world of living men:

      A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight

      Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when

      It sinks, the swarms that dimm’d or shar’d its light

Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.”

XXX

      Thus ceas’d she: and the mountain shepherds came,

      Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;

      The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame

      Over his living head like Heaven is bent,

      An early but enduring monument,

      Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song

      In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent

      The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,

And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

XXXI

      Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,

      A phantom among men; companionless

      As the last cloud of an expiring storm

      Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,

      Had gaz’d on Nature’s naked loveliness,

      Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray

      With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,

      And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

Pursu’d, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

XXXII

      A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—

      A Love in desolation mask’d—a Power

      Girt round with weakness—it can scarce uplift

      The weight of the superincumbent hour;

      It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

      A breaking billow; even whilst we speak

      Is it not broken? On the withering flower

      The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek

The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

XXXIII

      His head was bound with pansies overblown,

      And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;

      And a light spear topp’d with a cypress cone,

      Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew

      Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,

      Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart

      Shook the weak hand that grasp’d it; of that crew

      He came the last, neglected and apart;

A herd-abandon’d deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

XXXIV

      All stood aloof, and at his partial moan

      Smil’d through their tears; well knew that gentle band

      Who in another’s fate now wept his own,

      As in the accents of an unknown land

      He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann’d

      The Stranger’s mien, and murmur’d: “Who art thou?”

      He answer’d not, but with a sudden hand

      Made bare his branded and ensanguin’d brow,

Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!

XXXV

      What softer voice is hush’d over the dead?

      Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

      What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,

      In mockery of monumental stone,

      The heavy heart heaving without a moan?

      If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,

      Taught, sooth’d, lov’d, honour’d the departed one,

      Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,

The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

XXXVI

      Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!

      What deaf and viperous murderer could crown

      Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?

      The nameless worm would now itself disown:

      It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone

      Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,

      But what was howling in one breast alone,

      Silent with expectation of the song,

Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

XXXVII

      Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!

      Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,

      Thou noteless blot on a remember’d name!

      But be thyself, and know thyself to be!

      And ever at thy season be thou free

      To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow;

      Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;

      Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,

And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

XXXVIII

      Nor let us weep that our delight is fled

      Far from these carrion kites that scream below;

      He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;

      Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.

      Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow

      Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

      A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

      Through time and change, unquenchably the same,

Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

XXXIX

      Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,

      He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;

      ‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

      With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

      And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife

      Invulnerable nothings. We decay

      Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

      Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

XL

      He has outsoar’d the shadow of our night;

      Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

      And that unrest which men miscall delight,

      Can touch him not and torture not again;

      From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

      He is secure, and now can never mourn

      A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;

      Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceas’d to burn,

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

XLI

      He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;

      Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn,

      Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee

      The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

      Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!

      Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,

      Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown

      O’er the abandon’d Earth, now leave it bare

Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

XLII

      He is made one with Nature: there is heard

      His voice in all her music, from the moan

      Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;

      He is a presence to be felt and known

      In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

      Spreading itself where’er that Power may move

      Which has withdrawn his being to its own;

      Which wields the world with never-wearied love,

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

XLIII

      He is a portion of the loveliness

      Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear

      His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress

      Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

      All new successions to the forms they wear;

      Torturing th’ unwilling dross that checks its flight

      To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;

      And bursting in its beauty and its might

From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.

XLIV

      The splendours of the firmament of time

      May be eclips’d, but are extinguish’d not;

      Like stars to their appointed height they climb,

      And death is a low mist which cannot blot

      The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought

      Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,

      And love and life contend in it for what

      Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there

And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

XLV

      The inheritors of unfulfill’d renown

      Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,

      Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton

      Rose pale, his solemn agony had not

      Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought

      And as he fell and as he liv’d and lov’d

      Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,

      Arose; and Lucan, by his death approv’d:

Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reprov’d.

XLVI

      And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,

      But whose transmitted effluence cannot die

      So long as fire outlives the parent spark,

      Rose, rob’d in dazzling immortality.

      “Thou art become as one of us,” they cry,

      “It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long

      Swung blind in unascended majesty,

      Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song.

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!”

XLVII

      Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,

      Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.

      Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;

      As from a centre, dart thy spirit’s light

      Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might

      Satiate the void circumference: then shrink

      Even to a point within our day and night;

      And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink

When hope has kindled hope, and lur’d thee to the brink.

XLVIII

      Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,

      Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ‘tis nought

      That ages, empires and religions there

      Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;

      For such as he can lend—they borrow not

      Glory from those who made the world their prey;

      And he is gather’d to the kings of thought

      Who wag’d contention with their time’s decay,

And of the past are all that cannot pass away.

XLIX

      Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise,

      The grave, the city, and the wilderness;

      And where its wrecks like shatter’d mountains rise,

      And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress

      The bones of Desolation’s nakedness

      Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead

      Thy footsteps to a slope of green access

      Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;

L

      And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time

      Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;

      And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,

      Pavilioning the dust of him who plann’d

      This refuge for his memory, doth stand

      Like flame transform’d to marble; and beneath,

      A field is spread, on which a newer band

      Have pitch’d in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,

Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguish’d breath.

LI

      Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet

      To have outgrown the sorrow which consign’d

      Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,

      Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,

      Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find

      Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,

      Of tears and gall. From the world’s bitter wind

      Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.

What Adonais is, why fear we to become?

LII

      The One remains, the many change and pass;

      Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;

      Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,

      Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

      Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,

      If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

      Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,

      Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak

The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

LIII

      Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?

      Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here

      They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!

      A light is pass’d from the revolving year,

      And man, and woman; and what still is dear

      Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.

      The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near:

      ‘Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,

No more let Life divide what Death can join together.

LIV

      That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,

      That Beauty in which all things work and move,

      That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse

      Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love

      Which through the web of being blindly wove

      By man and beast and earth and air and sea,

      Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of

      The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,

Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

LV

     The breath whose might I have invok’d in song

      Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven,

      Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng

      Whose sails were never to the tempest given;

      The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!

      I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;

      Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,

      The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Adonais.” 1821. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Stanzas I-VII

The speaker begins with a forthright declaration: “I weep for Adonais—he is dead!” (Stanza I, Line 1). This sad hour will always be remembered. Adonais’s devastated mother, Urania, one of the Greek muses responsible for inspiring artists, recalls the sweet songs her beautiful and doomed son created and mourns his stilled voice. She weeps, but her tears serve no purpose: Adonais is dead, and tears cannot bring him back. The poet struggles to place the dead Adonais in some historic perspective and, in Stanza IV, invokes the memory of the great British poet John Milton, who, centuries earlier, died. Milton, however, did not die in his youth. Thus, the poet’s premature death suggests the sad reality of promise unrealized.

Urania is not alone in her sorrow. Even as Adonais’s body arrives at its final resting place in Rome, the “high Capital” (Stanza VII, Line 1), and the speaker ponders the beautiful corpse before it is interred, nature itself—the flowers and blossoms, the trees and the wind—is saddened. Nature grieves the loss of one so young, so promising, and so beautiful, even as he sleeps undisturbed and prepares to take his place in the cemetery, “[a] grave among the eternal” (Stanza VII, Line 4). It is a morbid moment—the speaker struggling to grasp the reality of death.

Stanzas VIII-XVI

Even as the young poet’s body begins to decay, what the speaker terms “the eternal Hunger” (Stanza VIII, Line 6), the speaker celebrates the eternal reach of the poet’s work. The speaker compares the thoughts and musings of the poet to gentle and quiet sheep, and he deems Keats their loving and careful herder. Keats’s numerous works, the sheep he herded, survive, although the speaker can only ponder all the songs (poems) the young poet might have created had he not died. These ideas, unborn and never to be expressed, now grow cold.

The poet’s role is unique, which means these ideas will never find their way into the work of any other poet. In Stanza X, one of these ideas, now slowly slipping into oblivion, actually grasps the cold hand of the dead poet and tries to comfort him, to “fan him with her moonlight wings” (Stanza X, Line 2). It then realizes that with the death of the poet its death is as well ensured. In Stanza XI, the speaker reflects on how all of these never-to-be-expressed thoughts glisten about the corpse like a sweet, faint morning dew already beginning to evaporate.

In turn, Desires, Adorations, Glooms, Pleasures, Hopes, and Fears—the sum topics of Keats’s verse—come to the burial site to pay their respects. As these abstract qualities slowly pass the prostrate body of the young poet, they also concede to the inevitable and evaporate quietly like mist that hangs briefly about a country stream in late fall before dissipating.

Stanzas XVII-XXXVII

The inevitability and reality of death, coupled with musings about the death of Keats, makes spring feel like fall. Nature thus provides a rallying point. Despite the profound sorrow nature feels over the death of this young poet, nature teaches immortality: With the spring, nature renews itself and in turn offers a potent metaphor for the soul. Despite the evident death of Adonais/Keats, the spirit, the soul of the poet survives. Nothing in nature actually dies. Although that faith in the spirit cannot ease the sorrow that the speaker and Urania feel, the sorrow and the terrors occasioned by the absoluteness of death need not be the last word.

In Stanzas XXII to XXIX, the poem reflects on the sorrow of Adonais’s mother. “Sorrow and fear / So struck, so rous’d” (Stanza XXIII, Lines 5-6) Urania that she approaches the dead Adonais with her heart wounded. She contemplates the figure of the dead youth and feels not serenity or calm but rather as “wild and drear and comfortless” (Stanza XXV, Line 6) as the starless night sky when lightning has flashed and is gone. The mother mourns her child and wrestles with the unanswerable question any mother would ask in similar circumstances: Why him, why my child, why does my son die too soon? As she contemplates the dead figure, she cannot help but ask why did your wisdom and your eloquence not protect you? The speaker can offer no solace, no answer save that such “a godlike mind” (Stanza XXIX, Line 6) inevitably soars for the briefest moment, rendering the earth bare and obvious, before it “sinks” and leaves the world in the depths of that “awful night” (Stanza XXIX, Lines 8, 9).

The speaker briefly mentions a murderous “worm” in Stanza XXVI that might be the cause of Adonais’s death. To remind himself of the immortality of poets, however, the speaker parades past the figure of the dead Adonais/Keats other important poets from the past whose works have ensured them immortality, most notably Sir Philip Sydney, Thomas Moore, and Thomas Chatterton, names perhaps not familiar to a contemporary reader but larger-than-life figures in Shelley’s time. These poets, these great lights, will welcome Keats to their company. In turn, Keats will join the illustrious poets who, back to Roman Antiquity, live on in their works. If anyone is inclined to mourn Keats and his too-soon death, the poet invites them to come to Rome, to spend a moment at the grave of Adonais/Keats. There in “the shadow of the tomb” (Stanza LI, Line 8) the visitor will feel the energy of the dead poet’s presence, his lingering “spirit’s light” (Stanza XLVII, Line 4) and know the reality of immortality. Like beauty and truth, poets (and artists generally) who serve such abstracts and who strive to discover their radiant energy, ultimately defy the limits of time and space.

Stanzas XXXVIII to LV

The argument now turns toward the consolations of immortality. The speaker celebrates: “[H]e is not dead, he doth not sleep” (Stanza XXXIX, Line 1). It is those left behind, those still encased in flesh, who decay and fester. Adonais soars in eternity; the rest of the world is still bound in time, doomed to surrender to time.

It is foolish to mourn for Adonais/Keats. He is now one with Nature, one with the resilient energies of a plane higher and grander than any puny individual. His voice is now fused with the wind and the song of the birds. He is still a presence, felt if not seen, known if not recognized. And now he is lovelier, fairer, and more resplendent than he ever was in his corruptible mortal shell. Death is trivial, a “low mist which cannot blot / [t]he brightness it may veil” (Stanza XLIV, Lines 4-5). Even as the long cavalcade of poets who died before him welcome him into their company, they invite young Adonais/Keats to “[a]ssume [his] winged throne” (Stanza XLVI, Line 9) and join their radiant throng.

At the grave, there as near to the poet as a person can be now, separated from the immortal and still interred in material reality, the visitor will understand the redemptive power of the imagination, feel the full force of immortality itself, the energy of his resilience. “[K]now thyself and him aright” (Stanza XLVII, Line 2). The speaker comes to understand Keats is beyond worlds, beyond sorrow, beyond darkness. The speaker informs those who might visit the cemetery:

[T]he spirit of the spot shall lead

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access

Where, like infant’s smile, over the dead

A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread (Stanza XLIX, Lines 6-9).

These lines suggest the living spirit of the poet himself. The cemetery then becomes a fitting stage for the poet’s ultimate argument of hope. There in the storied Eternal City, the speaker invites those left to mourn the death of the poet to touch the eternal. When it comes time to die, he cautions his reader, fear not. Understand that Keats’s soul is as radiant as any star in the night sky, and more importantly, its illumination cannot, will not fade. The “light” (Stanza LIV, Line 1) that animates the universe, its splendid kinetic “spirit” (Stanza LV, Line 2), beams down alike on each of us and promises a blessing that will soar far above the despairing curses we level at death’s intrusion. In the death of Adonais/Keats, therefore, understand that it is life—tawdry and tacky and temporary—that separates us from beauty and truth and death that brings us together with those energies.